


This Mess We're In

by CyanideBreathmint



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Contemporary AU, Falling In Love, M/M, Smut, benarmie, content warning: 9/11, just dressed up a bit, no i really am serious, surprise romance from the angstwright, this fic takes place over the 11th and 12th of september 2001, this is an autopsy of my own experience, uncharacteristically happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:46:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: Investment banking advisor Armitage Hux is stuck in New York city after two planes hit the two towers of the World Trade Center in what is later described as the worst terrorist attack in US history. He meets another stranded traveler, Ben Solo, who becomes his companion in this confusing and terrifying time.They turn to each other for comfort out of fear and grief, and must figure out what to do with their lives in the aftermath.Please read the note at the beginning of the fic before starting.





	This Mess We're In

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from a duet between PJ Harvey and Thom Yorke, from the album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. Please listen to it - not only is it a great song, but it captures the emotions I tried to pour into this story in its writing.
> 
> This fic is an attempt to exorcise demons that have lived in my heart for 16 years. 
> 
> Dedicated to my friend who was there, who helped, who survived, and who lives.

_Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 8:45 AM._

Armitage Hux looked about his sterile hotel room, making sure he had not left anything behind. He stepped into the bathroom and checked the countertop one last time. No stray cufflinks. Good. He popped the handle out of his rolling suitcase, slung the strap of his satchel over his left shoulder, picked up his suit bag. 

He walked down the generic hallways to the typical elevator, rode it downstairs to the front desk. He would check out, walk the short distance to JFK International, and in due course board his plane back to Heathrow. He sighed softly as he considered the flight across the Atlantic and his return to London, and wished he had a few more days in NYC. Every time he flew here he felt curiously like a man sneaking out from his mother’s home to visit his older, world-wise mistress, her voice harsh with clove cigarettes. His brief explorations of the city always felt vaguely illicit, like following a woman’s stocking up her thigh to find nothing but bare skin after the lace. 

It wasn’t as though he detested London; only that a city like New York was best seen from the streets, not from the insides of taxicabs, hotel rooms and across conference tables. And it wasn’t as though he loathed his job either. His position at Credit Suisse earned him a rather spectacular salary, let him visit destinations around the world (often in the wake of corporate acquisitions) and kept him busy enough that he didn’t spend much of his time thinking _what if._

It wasn’t what he wanted, 80 hour work week and all, not really, but it was what he had, and it was enough. 

Hux emerged into the lobby and walked slowly to the front desk, still caught up in reverie, when he realized that both the morning-shift clerks were staring silently in horror at one of the televisions in the lobby. One of the clerks had a hand over her mouth as she wept soundlessly. He turned to see what was on the news, and flinched at the sight. News, Fox 5 out of WNYW, showing thick black smoke billowing out over the World Trade Center. 

“Bloody fucking hell,” Hux breathed almost inaudibly as his stomach sank under the voice of a reporter speaking on the news channel. He sucked the last word inwards on a shallow draft of air as time slowed and stretched impossibly, taffy-like. Nothing was going to make sense from here on, he realized as the words started to register on his mind.

_“Jim, just a few moments ago, something believed to be a plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. I just saw flames inside, you can see the smoke coming out of the tower; we have no idea what it was. It was a tremendous boom just a few moments ago. You can hear around me emergency vehicles heading towards the scene. Now this could have been an aircraft or it could have been something internal. It appears to be something coming from the outside, due to the nature of the opening on about the 100th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.”_

Hux swallowed, shut his mouth, remembered to exhale. He turned to look at other guests and hotel staff standing paralyzed around him, all reeling in a choreography of horror and grief. Then he turned on the spot and returned to his room upstairs, feeling oddly detached as though he stood under the vast Atlantic ocean, looking out at the living world through its blue-tinted depths. He unlocked the door mechanically with his keycard, deposited his belongings within, and then sat down on the enormous unmade bed and turned the television on, changed the channel to Fox 5 News. 

Numbly he took his mobile phone out from his jacket pocket, thumbed in a number mechanically, held the phone up to his ear. Nothing. He blinked, shuddered as he clawed his way out of the shock and numbness, gulped mentally for air, and then re-dialed, this time remembering the correct international calling code for London. 

“Good afternoon,” a woman said on the other side, “This is Mr. Baker’s office, how can I help you today?” The clatter of keyboards and the noise of a printer carried faintly to his ears, and he reached for it, grasped the mundanity as a kind of comfort against the world. London, where everything was safe, hopefully. 

“Frances,” Hux said, his voice oddly calm and emotionless to his own ears, “This is Armitage Hux. Could you put me in to Phil, please.” His heart beat like a frantic bird against his sternum, as though it could no longer contain his anguish and was trying to batter its way free of its bony cage. 

“Mr. Baker is currently in a meeting,” Frances told him primly, “I can take a message, if you’d like.” 

A faint nausea was worming its way through the numbness, and he realized that his hands were shaking, tried to steady his voice. “All right. Frances, you’ll want to start checking the news. A plane has just hit one of the towers at the World Trade Center. I’m going to go to the airport and check if my flight is still leaving on time -” 

“You’re not playing a joke on me,” Frances said doubtfully, the professionalism bleeding out of her voice. He’d dated her a few times before they both admitted they were largely incompatible, but he much preferred her voice outside of working hours, where she let the Estuary bleed back into her English. 

“No - _Christ,”_ Hux hissed against a fresh anguish twisting in his belly, as the news showed another plane hitting the WTC. “Frances, you’ll want to pull Aunty Beeb up on your computer, don’t even bother finding the breakroom telly. A second plane just hit.” 

“I -” Frances fell silent on the other end as fingers clicked on a keyboard, “Armitage,” she said after a few moments, “Please tell me you’re all right and nowhere near there.” 

“No, I’m currently at one of the hotels right across the plaza from JFK, I’m seeing this on the news. I have to hang up soon. I need to check if my flight is still leaving, but please tell Phil that I may be unavoidably delayed.” 

“I - understand. Please take care of yourself, Armitage,” Frances said. He heard a shuddering in her voice, realized that she was probably crying and ruining her expertly done makeup. 

“I will,” he sighed, and then hung up just in time, before he started retching drily against the cumulative shock and wrongness of what he had seen. He tried to put his phone back in his pocket, failed, tried again before he dropped it nervelessly on top of the bed, and then it was too much - too much adrenaline in his system as he staggered unevenly to the bathroom, heartsick and gut-sick. 

The retching brought tears to his eyes, first out of reflex, and then running slowly down his cheeks like blood from a wound as he brought bile, and then air up, knees cold against the tiled floor in front of the commode. His ribs hurt, and his hands were numb. He was gasping, his sides heaving as he tried to slow his breathing as he reached up to the smooth granite countertop and hauled himself to his feet. 

He rinsed bitter bile out of his mouth, splashed cold water on his face, looked up as he groped automatically for a towel. He looked like a corpse in the cold light, his face so pale it had gone chalky, droplets of water running down his nose and chin to spot the lush silk of his necktie. He growled weakly at the length of cloth, tugged hard at the knot before he popped his shirt collar. 

It did not banish the sensation of choking, but it helped somehow, this tiny thing that he could control against the chaos of the world outside. He buried his face in the towel, tried not to think, before he came back out of the bathroom. He scooped the remote control up from his bed and killed the television, pocketed his mobile phone, and unlocked the door.

\---

_Tuesday, September 11th 2001, 9:15 AM._

“I’m sorry,” the ticketing agent told Hux, as he stood at the counter before her, “The FAA has stopped all departures from the East Coast. I’m not sure when -” She shut her eyes and drew a long breath, steadying herself, and he could see that she was at the point of nervous collapse. 

“It’s all right,” he told her, trying to sound as soothing as he could. If the events had affected him so - with his Britishness and distance from the US, then he could only imagine how native New Yorkers were feeling at this point. “You’re just delivering bad news,” he said. 

Irrationally and unprofessionally he reached across the counter and squeezed her fingers briefly, finding them colder than his own. She squeezed back hard, drew another shaky breath, and nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

Hux glanced at the growing line behind him and stepped away from the counter, unsure of his destination. Back to the hotel, perhaps, he thought. He glanced to his side at a coffee shop, wondered if it was even appropriate to do something this normal and mundane on a day like this. It felt terribly callous, but he hadn’t eaten anything since last night, and would be stuck in NYC for the near future. 

He was reaching into his jacket pocket for his wallet when he stopped, fetched up against something - no, someone. 

“Sorry -” they said slowly, haltingly, as Hux stepped back. An American accent, but not a New York one, and he couldn’t place it, not entirely. Not Southern, and not Texas, that much he was sure. Northeastern, but that was a very large area to cover. 

“No, I’m sorry,” he said reflexively, looking up into a pale, tear-streaked face. 

He had bumped into a young man, younger than his twenty-nine years, although he wasn’t sure how much. His dark wavy hair stuck to his wet cheeks. The young man scrubbed fiercely at his face with the back of his hand, but more tears ran down from his face even as he wiped his hand on the hem of his black t-shirt. He carried no luggage save for a bulging backpack, its chest and hip straps fastened across his broad, muscular torso.

“You’re not all right,” Hux said. It felt foolish and redundant to ask. 

“No,” he said, cracking a weak, lopsided smile through the tears. His expression wavered, his eyes very bright, before he just hid his face in his hands and wept. “I’m not all right.” The words came muffled from behind his broad fingers, palms held wide as though to shore up a breaching dam. 

“Neither am I,” Hux sighed, “Which makes the both of us.” Instinctively he pulled his handkerchief from his trouser pocket, shook the fine linen out, and handed it to the young man, who hesitated. In the end, Hux dabbed the tears off his chin himself, and then took his hand and pressed the damp cloth into it. 

“Thank you,” he breathed softly, as though anything louder would start the tears again. He looked around himself, at the people stepping around him, around Hux, before he took a step sideways out of the flow of traffic. Hux followed, feeling oddly light. The world swayed easily about him, and he realized then that it was not the world that had collapsed under him. No, his knees had buckled as though his heart now weighed far too much in his hollow chest.

Strong hands caught him under the arms, hauled him upright, and he leaned briefly against the young man’s chest, listening to his heartbeat while he found his equilibrium again. The contact seemed to crackle along his nerves, tingle on the surface of his skin. He would normally have been mortified, but it was a comfort in this morning where nothing made sense, and he leaned gratefully in for a few moments, closed his eyes. 

He could feel his feet moving under him as his companion murmured softly at him. “No, don’t pass out here - let’s get you off your feet.” A strong arm snaked across his back, and he let the young man haul him gently somewhere. 

The warm brown smell of coffee, and a chair, and murmurs around him when he opened his eyes. He was sitting at a table in the coffee shop, and one of the baristas had left the counter to bring him a cold cup of water. 

“Slowly,” she told him as she pressed the cup against his lips, and he took a small, cautious sip, felt it land heavily in the pit of his stomach. A second sip helped, and then he was straightening himself up in his chair, black dots swimming in his vision. 

The other barista came from behind the counter, proffering a paper cup of something hot and steaming that smelled of chocolate and coffee. The mocha was a welcome warmth in his hands, and he drank from it in small, constant sips as though each scalding mouthful went straight to his bloodstream. 

“Thanks, Tony,” the first barista told her colleague, before he stepped back behind the counter. “Skipped breakfast today?” she asked Hux. He looked more carefully at her, registered the name on her nametag, the thick dreadlocks confined under a bandanna. _Angel._

“I was going to get something while I waited for my flight out, but -” Words failed him. He put the cup down on the table and closed his fingers into fists, appreciated the tiny points of pain where his short nails dug into the flesh of his palms. 

“Yeah.” The word was said in stereo, as Angel and the young man he had met both murmured at the same moment. 

“You really should have something more to eat, and it’s not just because I’m trying to sell you something,” Angel said, with a brittle, shell-shocked laugh, teetering on the edge of tears.

“I know,” Hux said. “Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know, going home? I don’t think anyone would blame you for leaving early.” 

“No,” Angel said, sighed as she blinked tears out of her dark brown eyes. “My folks’re okay and none of my friends work anywhere near the World Trade Center. I’m going to do more good here than if I left.” She gestured at the cup of mocha, at Hux’s unsteady equilibrium, and shrugged, having run out of words. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, and she nodded to him and resumed her place at the counter, waiting for more stranded travelers who might need a hot drink and some comfort, a place to sit the hours away. He watched her and Tony murmur quietly to each other, and knew the numbness on their faces, felt it within himself. Then he looked up into the face of his rescuer, caught him biting down on his lip to stall a tremor. Moles speckled his face like stars on a chart, and his eyes were dark and weary.

“Thank you, um -” Hux started to say, before he realized that he didn’t know the young man’s name. 

“Ben,” he said, diffidently, “Ben Solo.”

They shook hands, and Hux found Ben’s fingers sound and strong, his grip not crushing like one might expect from a hand that size. “Armitage Hux.” 

“Don’t tell me, ‘Tage,” Ben said tiredly, “You were going to take a plane to somewhere, Heathrow prolly, from the way you sound, and then this happened.” His chest heaved, and Hux watched him slow his own breathing with an effort of will.

“Yes,” said Hux. He found himself liking the way Ben had shortened his unwieldy name - it sounded far better than the usual _Armie,_ felt oddly but not uncomfortably intimate. “You?” 

“Same thing, ‘cept I was going to Boston.” They stared silently at each other, alike in their misery and then Hux slid the cup of mocha slowly across the table, into Ben’s waiting hand. Ben picked it up, trembling, popped the lid off and then drained most of the cup, his throat moving as he swallowed against the heat of it. 

“Thank you,” Ben breathed afterwards, put the paper cup down between them. He put the lid back on, pressing carefully down on its rim with his fingertips, all nervous energy.

“You looked like you needed it,” said Hux, who glanced at his watch briefly. 9:37 AM. It felt strange and impossible that only twenty minutes had passed since he had spoken to the ticketing agent, or that less than an hour had passed since he had first seen the news report on WNYW.

Ben looked at Hux, glanced down at his watch and nodded as though in sympathy. Time probably didn’t make sense to anyone else right now, least of all him. “I did,” he said, his gaze veiled and haunted, “What’re you going to do now?” 

Hux sighed as he tried to organize his thoughts. He had not thought about what to do next, had only stumbled to the airport out of some kind of desperate need to leave the television and the news behind. “Get something to eat like Angel suggested,” he said, “Walk back to my hotel room, and wait for more news.” He stood up, found his surroundings acceptably stable, and took the last sip of the still-warm mocha, closed his eyes briefly against reality. 

“I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind?” Ben stood up, shrugged his backpack back on without buckling the chest and hip straps. “I need to get out of here for a bit, and besides, you might faint again.” 

_I know exactly how you feel._ Hux thought, and then they staggered to the counter together.

\---

_Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 9:50 AM._

Hux stood outside his hotel room door and patted his pockets down right-handed. He held a coffee cup in his left hand, and was temporarily holding the paper bag from the coffee shop in his teeth while he searched for his keycard. Angel had refused to accept payment for that first mocha she had given him, and in the end he had paid for his own order and Ben’s, and left her a tip twice as large as the bill. 

Ben stood in the hallway, the light burning highlights into his unruly dark hair, and he watched silently as Hux opened the door and stepped across the threshold, left the cup of coffee and the paper bag on the desk in the room. 

“I should be going now,” he said, tried to smile, but the expression twisted into a grimace as he fought yet more tears. Hux shut his eyes against the pain in Ben’s face, felt a similar hurt tearing in his own chest. 

“Where to?” Hux asked him when he hesitated, through the open door. “Do you have a place to stay?”

Ben shook his head. “I was crashing with friends earlier. I dunno. I guess I’ll go back to the airport and wait, see if I can call one of them.” 

“No,” Hux said, “ _no_ , I’m not turning you out onto the streets like this. Stay, please. You can call your friends from here.” 

“If it’s okay,” Ben said. He glanced down at his sneakers, and then back up at Hux.

“It is,” Hux breathed. He retrieved the remote control and clicked quickly through the news stations for updates, images dancing seizure-fast across the screen. Ben stepped out of the hallway into the room and shut the door behind him, before he sat heavily on the bed. He left his own paper cup of coffee on the television console, and left his own backpack on the floor. They watched in sick silence as CNN confirmed a third plane crash at the Pentagon, theorized about terrorism. 

Hux switched news channels rapidly, stopping at ABC. He held his breath as impossible footage played before him - a great roar of noise and a massive plume of dust and the screaming of bystanders as the South Tower began to crumble. Someone was reporting in on the phone over the news coverage - a correspondent who lived nearby, but Hux could no longer make out the words.

“Oh fuck,” Ben whispered softly, “oh fuck, _no_ -” Hux muted the television and crossed the room, sat down on the bed beside Ben. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into Ben’s hair, as Ben clung to him and cried into the wool of his coat, “I’m sorry,” he repeated again and again, not knowing why he said it. He could not look away, could not turn his gaze from the horror he was witnessing. _Christ_ and _fuck_ and _bloody hell_ started to lose meaning even as he swore softly under his breath, reciting tiny profanities like a mantra. 

_What about the first responders, bloody fuck, what about the people trapped in the building, oh, Christ, no_. The thought hurt so much he could only recoil from it. He chose instead to bury his face against the side of Ben’s head and closed his eyes, listened dry-eyed to the gasp and heave of Ben’s sobbing. Hux felt terrible that he was not weeping, but it was as though he had been shocked and shocked again until he had lost the capacity to do so. The old him (the one from before 8:45 AM this morning) might have been mortified to be holding a virtual stranger this closely, but that was gone, irrelevant and washed away by a desperate need for comfort. 

_don’t look up,_ a rational part of his mind whispered, _don’t look up, you’ll never forget what you’ve already seen. no need to add more._ And yet, perversely, he could not look away from the updates, the breaking news, this neverending tide of misery playing across the silent screen. 

Hux hadn’t realized he’d been staring unblinking at the television until his eyes started to dry out and hurt. He swallowed dryly against the ache in his chest, shuddered, and then Ben’s warm, sound hands were resting to either side of his face, thick fingers tangling hard in his hair, pulling enough to hurt. 

“No,” Ben whispered to him, “Armitage. _Hux._ Look away. Look at me. Just look at me. All this is still going to be out there later, tomorrow, forever.” 

Hux blinked, shivered as he turned away from the screen to look into Ben’s face. The light of the TV played over the bones of his face, danced in his dark eyes, bounced off the tears running down his cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” Hux said miserably, “I don’t know why I’m not crying - I don’t know why I can’t -” And then it was his turn to be comforted as Ben pulled him close in a tight embrace, rocked him against that broad chest. 

“We won’t look,” Ben murmured into the top of his head, “we won’t look, we won’t watch, we won’t grant them the victory of our tears.” Hux lifted his face from Ben’s chest and looked up at his narrow jaw, felt cold tears dripping down to splash on his scalp despite that Ben’s assertions. 

_Oh God,_ he thought as he pressed his face against Ben’s shoulder. “How could anyone be this cruel?” he moaned, shivered against Ben’s embrace.

“It’s okay,” Ben continued to murmur as though trying to convince himself, “It’s okay. People are helping. People are helping. People wanna help. Some people are assholes, but people are good in the whole.” He sucked in a deep shaky breath, and Hux felt him sob convulsively as the tears began again. 

“Shh,” Hux whispered into the side of his neck, “I’m here.” He pulled briefly away, reached for the remote control and turned the television off. “We’re here.” He leaned into Ben’s shoulder again, brushed his mouth against the pulse of his neck, regretted it almost instantly as Ben tensed up against him. “I’m sorry,” he said, unsure of why he had done so, “I’ve never -” 

Ben held Hux gently at arms’ length, gazed into his face, his dark eyes so very bright with tears and pain, so much terror in that face. “It’s okay,” he said softly, after a long moment. He leaned in and returned the kiss, his mouth hot and slick and salty, “I have.” 

Hux shut off his awareness of the world then, flinching away from the horrid truths of the day to lose himself instead in the taste and smell of Ben, the touch of him. How his ribs heaved with each sobbing breath, how their legs tangled together atop the sheets as they kissed again and again. “‘Tage,” Ben gasped against Hux’s mouth, and he realized then that this was something that he had wanted and needed all unknowing for a very, very long time.

\---

_Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 2:35 PM_

Hux felt himself stir from under the sheets, still fully dressed after having fallen asleep with Ben’s heart beating fiercely against his back. Ben lay sprawled beside him sans shoes, shoulders against the headboard as he watched the news on the muted television. “What was that about not watching?” Hux asked him softly, watched him turn his head slowly from the news. 

“The North Tower’s gone, too,” Ben said calmly, too steadily, his gaze almost blank. His fingers closed around the comforter he was lying on top of, and he fought a shudder. “US airspace is now closed. I’d been trying to call friends, my mom, but the lines are jammed.” He held up his hand, looked bleakly at Hux as he counted off. “Four planes, total, the North and South Towers, the Pentagon. Last one’s crashed in Pennsylvania, but I’m not sure if it was a shootdown or if they crashed it.” 

“God help those Air Force pilots if it was,” Hux reached for the remote control between them, and unmuted the television, watched Mayor Rudy Giuliani answer questions at a press conference.

“Mayor Giuliani,” a reporter asked, as flashbulbs went off around them, “Can you give us an estimate on casualties at the World Trade Center?” 

“More than any of us can bear,” Giuliani said, obviously shaken under his studied media face, and Hux turned the television off, curled up on his side, dry-eyed against the sheets. He should take his shoes off, he thought, his coat too, thought belatedly of his pastry and his now-cold cup of coffee. He crawled out of bed and shed coat and waistcoat alike, unknotted his necktie and left it where he had been lying in bed, and then sat down at the desk and retrieved his laptop from his leather satchel. 

It took a while for his laptop to connect to the Internet, but connect it did. A quick glance at his inbox showed it crammed from top to bottom with panicky emails, mostly from co-workers and the occasional acquaintance. Sighing, he replied to all of them with a single, terse message. 

_Yes, I am in New York, but I am well and nowhere near the WTC. I am currently stranded here due to the closure of US airspace, and am not sure when I can depart for Heathrow. I will update you all later when I know more._

He sighed again and hit Send to All, and then checked the next two emails in the list, both from his boss Phil Baker, who he had included in his Send All list. 

_Armitage,_ the first one read, _Frances told me what happened. I’ll keep your business credit line open for now, get back in touch with me._

The second one was more verbose. _I tried calling you, but the lines are busy. You’re not the only one from this office stranded in the US, so here’s what upper management has decided. You continue to stay at your hotel unless you’re to be evacuated for some reason, and we’ll write off your food and board as an extraordinary expense. Stay inside if you can help it, it’s not like you can donate blood in the US, what with our mad cattle. Check back in with me when you can and get some rest. Stay safe._

Hux sighed, closed Outlook, and then glanced over to Ben, who was staring at his phone again. “Would you like to check your email on my laptop?” he asked. “The hotel’s Internet connection is slow but working, and it’s included in my room fee, in any case.” 

Ben looked up so quickly that Hux felt a pang of guilt at not thinking of this sooner. “Would you mind?” he asked as he sat up on the bed, his long feet sinking into the deep pile of the carpet. 

“Not at all.” Hux shook his head and stood up from the desk, retrieved his cold cup of coffee and took a distasteful swig. _“Ugh.”_ He grimaced at the taste, but kept drinking between bites of his now-leathery pastry. The caffeine and calories would do him some good. 

Ben sat down at the desk he had just vacated and opened Internet Explorer, went and checked a webmail account. His brow had been furrowed with worry, but his expression slowly unknotted as he checked through the emails and their contents, let out a long, weary sigh. “My NYC friends have all checked in,” he said, blinking hard to fight back tears of relief, “and they’re all worried sick because I haven’t checked in yet. Plus my mother is about to commandeer a National Guard truck and drive hell-bent for leather just to make sure I’m okay.” 

Hux laughed weakly at Ben’s little joke, watched as his large fingers played quickly across the laptop keyboard. Ben paused, looked straight up at Hux. “Is it alright if I tell her about you?” 

“What about me?” Hux asked, marvelling internally at his lack of embarrassment at having kissed and necked a complete stranger. He probed his feelings carefully, told himself that he would probably expected to have been as embarrassed if the stranger had been a woman. Kissing Ben had felt intensely authentic, something natural and right and needed despite his previous lack of experience with men. 

“Oh,” and Ben blushed then as though reading his mind, the flush creeping up his neck and along his ears, “Mostly that I’ve met another traveller stranded here and I’m crashing in your hotel room, so she can hold the cavalry and not show up in a rescue mission.”

“Of course,” Hux murmured, thinking of the kind of fierce love that would prompt an average middle-aged woman to do something like that, “She must be a tough woman.” 

“Yeah, tougher than I’d like sometimes,” Ben laughed weakly, “But she’s my mom, and the only one I’ve got.” 

“It must be nice,” Hux said, realized belatedly how much that statement had revealed in this raw, naked moment in the limbo of his hotel room, on this terrible day. He had not spent enough time with his birth mother to know her very well, and he had not liked his stepmother very much either.

Ben remained tactfully silent. He typed a few sentences out on Hux’s keyboard, finished sending the email, and then turned in the chair, away from the monitor. “What do we do now?” he asked, his strong-boned face oddly naked in the faint glow of the laptop monitor. 

Hux shut his eyes against the question, realizing that he had no real answer. “I don’t know about you,” he sighed at last, “but I’ve been told to stay here and wait it out by my bosses. They’ll keep paying for my room and board while I’m stranded in the US, at least until my flight is rescheduled.” 

“Yeah,” Ben said. His hair fell about his face as he looked down at the carpet at his bare feet, but Hux could see those dark eyes staring at him through that messy fall of hair. “Can I keep staying here, at least for tonight?” Ben asked, his voice oddly soft and vulnerable.

“Wha-” Hux blinked. He could not imagine turning Ben out onto the streets of NYC with the sounds of news and police helicopters overhead, did not want to think of him trudging his slow, lonely way to a friend’s house as the shadows lengthened. “Of course you can. You can stay here until I leave, if that’s what you want.” 

“Good,” Ben breathed, as he straightened up in the chair, pushed his hair away from his flushed, narrow face - he was blushing again. “I was - I am afraid.” 

Hux read the uncertainty in Ben’s gaze, the faint hint of fear. “That I’ll kick you out?” he asked, not understanding exactly the source of his unease.

“Yeah,” Ben nodded and tried to grin, failed, “or that you wouldn’t want me around now you’re less emotionally stressed.” 

A lightbulb flickered belatedly on in Hux’s mind as he read the longing in Ben’s eyes, behind the fear and the sorrow. “Is this because you kissed me, earlier?”

“Yeah.” Ben managed a smile, a genuine one, this time, and it felt so very strange to Hux that this and his earlier expression could both be described by the same word. 

“I kissed you first,” said Hux, remembering how Ben’s pulse had beat strongly against his lips, a promise of life and human connection, comfort. 

“I remember,” Ben glanced up at Hux, his expression almost shy, “But then I thought about your work, and about whether you had someone waiting for you in London.” 

Hux shrugged. “I’m an investment banking advisor and Credit Suisse doesn’t care what I do outside of work as long as I don’t take up cannibalism or something equally outré. And no, I don’t have anyone waiting in London for me. My basil plants wilted a month and a half ago and I’ve been too busy to even give them a dignified disposal. And,” he added, as the thought occurred to him, “You don’t have to do anything to stay here with me. I don’t demand anything of you. Only if you want to, because I’m not going to make you whore yourself out to me.” He only realized how sad and lonely his life might sound to someone else after he had said that, felt a pang of regret stabbing somewhere between his heart and his liver.

“Good,” Ben said softly. He stood up, rising to his full height, taller than Hux even while barefoot, “because I don’t want to be alone.” He crossed the floor and let his hands rest lightly on Hux’s shoulders, his fingertips running lightly over the silk of Hux’s braces. 

Hux reached up with his right hand, circled Ben’s wrist with his fingers and pulled it in for a brief kiss, the skin of Ben’s palm salty against his lips. “Neither do I, not on a day like this.” 

“You won’t have to demand anything of me, ‘Tage,” Ben whispered, his breath hot and ticklish against the shell of Hux’s ear, “because I want to do it, anyway.” 

“And what would ‘it’ be?” Hux asked as he closed his eyes, let Ben kiss him softly and gently on each eyelid, on the corner of his mouth. 

One of Ben’s strong hands cupped the nape of Hux’s neck, where the hair was clipped close to the skin as the other slid slowly down the crisp cotton of his shirt to linger beneath the back strap of his braces, just above the fishtail back of his trousers. “Everything,” Ben breathed against his mouth, the word bringing a shiver down his spine. 

“If you’re here with me,” Hux murmured against the side of Ben’s neck as his own hands wandered up beneath the hem of his t-shirt, rucked it inexpertly up to bare the skin of his back, “then come, Armageddon, come.” 

Ben’s touch was deliberate as he unbuttoned Hux’s shirt, his fingers lingering on the placket front as he worked each button. _It’s as though he doesn’t want to scare me,_ Hux thought as he spread his own fingers over Ben’s muscular back, felt the life and warmth in him. The grief weighing in his heart seemed to amplify his senses, slow time down, and he realized he was savoring this experience. Each touch, each brush of Ben’s full mouth burned sweetly beneath his skin. 

He had hungered for previous partners, fucked like he wanted to devour them whole, always searching for someone he could lose himself in temporarily so that he could feel human warmth against his skin without having to think about it. But now he was content to take things with aching slowness, to gasp into Ben’s mouth and arch his back under that sure hand, to explore every inch of Ben’s skin with his fingertips. 

Ben backed Hux gently towards the bed, and he felt his knees buckle as his heels fetched up against the edge of the bedframe. He toppled softly backwards and landed on top of of the yielding mattress, watched Ben grab the hem of his own t-shirt and tug it over his head. Hux propped himself up on his elbows, lifted himself to a sitting position and pressed his mouth to the hard plane of Ben’s belly, Ben’s belt buckle cold against his chin. 

He heard Ben suck in a ragged breath, and then another as he fumbled with the belt buckle and ran the palm of his right hand down the bulge in his jeans. It was as though Ben had been electrocuted - he ground, shuddering, into Hux’s touch, whimpered as Hux stroked him firmly through layers of denim and metal-toothed zipper. Hux felt Ben exhale as he unbuttoned his jeans, busied himself in kissing the sharpness of Ben’s hipbones, licked the sharp sweat off his skin as he tugged carefully down on the zipper tab. 

Hux paused and blinked in faint surprise - Ben wasn’t wearing any underwear. His cock bobbed up, freed from the confines of his jeans, its head a deep dusky rose. Hux had never been that up close with another man’s block and tackle before, and he glanced up into Ben’s face, feeling as though he had taken on quite a bit more than he could handle. 

“What do you want me to do?” Hux asked Ben, who had opened his eyes and was looking back down at him, his gaze veiled by his eyelashes. Hux closed his left hand experimentally on the shaft of Ben’s cock, was rewarded by a shudder and a low groan and a brief laugh. 

“Haven’t you ever had a blowjob before?” Ben asked him, and Hux felt a flush of heat filling his neck, his face as he began to blush. 

“Well, yes,” Hux said, grabbing desperately for shreds of composure, “but it’s not as though I thought to ask any of my partners for technique lessons.” Ben felt so big in his hand, the girth of him almost intimidating, and Hux could feel the pulse of him against his palm and fingers, that aching throb of arousal and desire.

“Point,” Ben laughed. “Do you want me to tell you what I want you to do?” He reached down and took a handful of Hux’s short hair, tugged oh-so-gently upwards as though to guide him. That contact seemed to set Hux alight with hunger and need. His cock twitched against the silk of his boxers, and he shivered against Ben’s strong fingers, pressed a kiss to the head of Ben’s cock. Ben was dripping already, the taste of his pre-ejaculate salty-sweet, thick against Hux’s tongue. 

“Yes,” Hux said, breathing the word softly so Ben could enjoy the heat of his exhalation, felt him shudder in delight as he started to stroke him slowly, carefully. 

“Okay,” said Ben, as he recovered his breath, “Keep your left hand where it is. I know I’m kinda big and I don’t wanna choke you.” He gasped softly with each movement of Hux’s hand, arched into each tug, his head thrown back. 

Hux pressed another kiss to the head of Ben’s cock, stroked him to the very base of his cock. Ben’s wiry pubic hair curled and tickled slightly against the edge of his hand. “And?” he asked.

“Open your mouth,” Ben gasped, “Start playing with the head of my cock.” He groaned again, louder this time, as Hux took him carefully into his mouth, started licking at the silky skin of his glans, the coronal ridge. 

_Like this?_ Hux wanted to ask, but couldn’t with his mouth so full. 

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” Ben breathed as Hux started to suck lightly, experimentally, “Yes. Watch your teeth.” 

Hux could feel Ben straining, shivering, holding himself as still as he could. Those strong fingers tugged carefully at his hair, guiding him along the head of Ben’s cock as he began to find a rhythm, back and forth. He played the tip of his tongue against the slit of Ben’s meatus, pressed it against the ridge of Ben’s raphe and frenulum with each slow bob of his head. 

“Wait -” Ben gasped softly, pulled away briefly. The head of his cock slipped out of Hux’s wet lips with a soft, ridiculous pop. 

“Mhm?” Hux pressed yet another kiss to the head of Ben’s cock, paused in his attentions. “Am I doing something wrong?” 

“No.” Ben was panting, his chest heaving with each breath, and Hux almost could not bear the sight of him, alive and beautiful and _his_ for this brief time where nothing made sense any more. “No, you’re amazing,” Ben repeated, “Just - may I come in your mouth?” 

“You’re so polite,” Hux marveled. That frank question brought a shiver down Hux’s spine, and he began to kiss his way down the shaft of Ben’s cock as he felt within himself for the answer, found surprisingly little revulsion or fear. “Yes,” he breathed against Ben’s hot skin, kissed his way back up to Ben’s cockhead.

Ben whimpered when Hux took his cock in his mouth again, his movements surer this time, more certain. He guided Hux slowly with tugs on his hair, and then more urgently as he grew more desperate. “Tell me if I’m fucking your mouth too hard,” he gasped as he began to buck up against Hux’s touch. 

_I want to taste you,_ Hux thought against his own hunger and desire, against his fresh grief and the loneliness he had refused to see or admit until today. _I want you to mark me and make me yours._ He sucked a long breath in and just let his mouth go slack around Ben’s eager thrusts, closed his eyes to concentrate only on the taste and smell, the very feel of him. 

“Fuck, _fuck,_ ” Ben moaned, his voice becoming hoarse around the edges, “‘Tage, I’m close - I’m gonna -” He was silent, utterly still when he spent, not even breathing as he arched up and up into Hux’s mouth, fingers tightening painfully around Hux’s hair. His spunk was copious, salty and subtly bitter, a faint chlorine burp in the back of Hux’s throat as he swallowed, swallowed again even as some of it spilled past his lips to run down his chin. 

“Oh, fuck,” Ben gasped as he dropped to his knees in front of Hux, tipped that narrow face upwards and kissed him on the mouth, his velvety tongue seeking out that dribble of come on Hux’s chin, licking him clean. “Thank you, _thank you,_ ” Ben breathed between kisses, holding Hux’s face within his hands almost possessively. 

“You’re welcome,” Hux murmured numbly, his world narrowing only to the molten ache in his loins, that sweet frustration climbing slowly up his spine. Ben pushed him gently onto the mattress, kicked off his own jeans. One of the legs caught on his foot, and Ben growled softly in frustration, grasped the frayed hem between the toes of his other foot, and worked it loose. Hux kicked off his loafers as he watched Ben, settled himself more comfortably on the bed. 

“What do you want me to do now?” Ben asked. He helped Hux with his braces, unbuttoned the fly of his trousers with painful slowness. 

“I don’t know,” Hux confessed, “You’re the first man I’ve ever had.” He found himself arching up into Ben’s touch, into the sweet friction of Ben’s ministrations, realized that Ben was teasing him, mimicking what he had done earlier. 

“You’re such a pretty virgin.” Ben hooked his clever fingers under the waistband of Hux’s boxers, tugged those and his trousers off, pulled his socks off too. 

Hux laughed despite himself as Ben helped him with the cuffs of his shirt, stripped off his undershirt. “I don’t think I qualify.” 

Ben dropped Hux’s cufflinks on the nightstand with a clatter, half-straddled him, arching over him to kiss him on the forehead.“You do according to my definition, and that’s what counts.” 

“And what might your definition of a virgin be?” Hux asked, looking into Ben’s warm eyes as his dark hair fell to veil both their faces.

“Virginity isn’t like, an on/off thing,” Ben murmured thoughtfully in between kisses, “or like a freshness seal you rip off. It’s a spectrum, it’s liminal. You can have many virginities. You can be sexually active but never done a particular act, and you’re a virgin in that regard until you choose to share it with a partner.” 

Hux gasped sharply against Ben’s mouth, arched his back off the mattress when Ben took hold of his cock in one big hand, tugged gently. “So smart,” he managed to breathe as his world started to dwindle to the bliss of Ben’s expert touch. 

“May I have the honor of taking your virginity, Armitage Hux?” Ben asked quietly, almost solemnly, and Hux felt his eyes fill with tears at Ben’s kindness, his consideration, this honor granted unasked-for. 

“Yes,” Hux sighed, abandoning himself to the moment, to the sweet thrumming in his nerves zinging up his spine like small electric shocks. His world had begun to vibrate, to ring with sensory overload as Ben resumed his attentions, teasing and caressing him in a slow, sadistic burn. The tears ran down his temples, soaked into his hair as he shut his eyes, and there Ben was, his mouth hot and eager, hungry against the sensitive skin of his neck. 

Hux placed his right hand against Ben’s sternum, felt his pulse beat strong and fast through the bone, as his other hand reached up to caress Ben’s head. The ends of Ben’s slippery hair tickled slightly against his chin and neck, and he tipped his head forward, inhaled the scent of Ben’s sweat and shampoo mingled with something unknowable and unique, the very fragrance of his being. 

Hux opened his eyes then, traced the constellations of moles on his skin as Ben’s slick mouth left a trail of evaporating spit along his collarbone, the hollow of his throat, up against the bump of his Adam’s apple. He gasped and whimpered when Ben nibbled at his nipples, teasing sensitive flesh with the points of his teeth, and keened in response when Ben moved slowly downwards, slipping a hand between Hux’s thighs to cup and caress the soft skin of his scrotum. 

Ben’s strong fingers brushed lightly over the crease where Hux’s arse met his left thigh, and then pushed firmly down on his perineum, just behind his balls. The sensation was unexpected, breathtaking, and he let out a sudden, surprised yelp. He ground himself against the palm of Ben’s hand, tried to get some friction on his cock, _anything,_ but Ben only laughed and pulled his hand away. 

“What are you doing?” Hux groaned in frustration and exasperation as Ben came back up to kiss him lightly on the forehead. 

“Teasing you,” Ben said with a grin, “And waiting for this.” Hux gasped as Ben grabbed his wrist and guided his hand downwards onto his cock, found it hot and hard again under his fingertips. 

“My God,” Hux breathed, “You’re insatiable.” He closed his fingers around Ben’s cock and squeezed, grinned at the sharp hiss it provoked. He had always been proud of his ability to learn quickly. 

“So I’ve been told, yes,” Ben managed to say in between Hux’s slow, careful strokes, the words shivering out as he gasped and shuddered. He then grabbed Hux’s wrists and pinned them gently above his head, leaning his weight upon them. “May I fuck you, ‘Tage?” 

Hux shut his eyes briefly. He’d had a girlfriend who liked anal sex more than vaginal penetration, and she had been the one to induct him into those specific mysteries. She had reassured him that he was not hurting her at all, that first time. He looked back up at Ben, studied his face momentarily, realized that he trusted Ben not to hurt him. “Yes,” he said. 

Ben straightened up and leaned over the side of the bed to unfasten his backpack. “Have you ever?” he asked as he rummaged around within. 

Hux laughed, oddly charmed by Ben’s utter honesty. “Not receiving, no. I thought that would have been obvious.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ben shrugged, “you might have dated a woman who likes strap-ons.” He straightened back up, holding a roll of condoms held together with a rubber band, and a small bottle of lubricant. 

“Not yet, no,” Hux laughed again, “Perhaps I should put out a personal.” His heart sank after he said that - it was the first time he had admitted that this was likely to be a temporary thing, but Ben showed no sign of anger or sorrow. 

“You’d have so many takers,” Ben murmured seriously as he squeezed a dollop of lubricant onto his fingers, “You’re so handsome.” 

“I don’t think of myself as handsome,” Hux gasped in reply as Ben ran his slick fingers up the crease of his arse again, tilted his hips upwards with his other hand. The lubricant felt shockingly cold against the pucker of his arsehole. 

“You are,” Ben said as he began to push very slowly and gently. “Not in a Hollywood way, but you’re gorgeous. Breathe, relax,” he whispered to Hux as the first joint of his index finger slipped past the tight muscular ring of Hux’s anal sphincter. 

Hux sucked in a long, shaky breath as he tried to relax, felt himself tensing up against the strangeness of the sensation. It wasn’t painful, just something completely alien to his previous experiences. He gasped as Ben pushed his finger further up his arsehole, stretching him slowly open. 

“You’ve never had anyone play with your prostate?” Ben asked conversationally, and Hux shook his head, a movement that turned into a shocked, thrashing arch off the mattress as Ben crooked his finger to find a point up Hux’s arse that ached sweetly at the movement. “I suppose not,” Ben shrugged when Hux did not find the breath or words to answer, and he began to slide his finger gently out of Hux’s arsehole, rubbing his fingertip lightly over the bump of his prostate. 

Hux felt something tight and clenching in him twitch and shiver and melt under Ben’s careful touch, felt himself relaxing as he sank back into the mattress, his legs spread wide to grant Ben more access. 

“I think you’re ready for a little more,” Ben purred. He pulled his finger from Hux, slicked more lubricant onto his hand, and then replaced that finger with two. Hux tried to breathe, sucked in a shaky breath, then howled as Ben spread his fingers apart, scissoring them open inside him. Ben stopped his ministrations immediately. “Am I hurting you?” he asked seriously. 

“N-no,” Hux managed to gasp. His teeth had started chattering, and he was shivering as though he were in the grip of fever. “It’s just -” He sucked in another gulp of air, slowed his breathing, “It’s just so much.” 

“Do you want me to slow down?” Ben asked. 

Hux answered by rocking his hips forward against Ben’s hand, trying to get more of that sensation, that bliss. “No. Don’t stop,” he groaned, “Keep going.” 

“Okay.” Ben pulled his fingers free again to add more lubricant, and this time it was so easy, Ben’s strong fingers sliding up Hux’s arse in a smooth glide. Hux gasped and moaned and shuddered as Ben finger-fucked him slowly and gently for what felt like an eternity. Ben had three fingers inside Hux when he slowed, stopped. “I think you’re ready,” he said. 

“I am,” Hux gasped breathlessly, eagerly as he watched Ben run his lube-slick hand up and down his cock. 

“And how would you know it if you were, hm?” Ben asked before he tore a condom wrapper open with his left hand, holding the edge of it with his teeth. 

__“I’m willing to risk it,” Hux sighed. He lay back and watched Ben stroke himself briefly, his breath quickening with the movement, before Ben rolled the condom down his cock, his fingers pinching the reservoir tip expertly. He squeezed more lubricant onto the latex sheathing his cock, rubbed it in, and then propped Hux’s ankles up on his shoulders._ _

“Breathe,” Ben said again as he guided the head of his cock against Hux’s arse, the head nudging insistently against his arsehole. Hux took a long, steady breath as Ben pushed slowly into him, gasped at the stretch and the sheer vulnerability of letting someone inside him. He felt raw and exposed, sensitive as a naked eye, and yet also completely secure in his belief that Ben would not hurt him, not intentionally. 

“Am I hurting you?” Ben hissed between gritted teeth as he eased further in, and Hux shook his head and gasped his assent against the slow drag of Ben’s cock inside him. He could feel Ben’s pulse inside him, he realized, felt the throb and ache of his own prostate answer it from within, and then whimpered as Ben bottomed out, seating himself fully inside him. 

“You’re so tight,” Ben groaned into his ear. He shifted his position carefully, bending Hux almost double beneath him, one hand spread palm-first against the mattress to the side of Hux’s head as he steadied himself. 

“Use me,” Hux whispered, gasped as Ben started to thrust slowly and experimentally. “Break me in.” Ben was so deep he could almost taste him, he thought, savoring each bob of his cock as Ben found his prostate again and again. 

“Fuck,” Ben said in time to each thrust, “fuck, how are you - so - perfect?” He quickened his pace, and Hux could only clutch at the headboard, his sweaty fingers scrabbling off the wood before he found its edge, gripped down hard enough that the wood bit into the flesh of his hands. Ben was fucking him so hard, using him with an intensity that bordered on pain. Hux’s senses were overloading, his cock and his balls and the base of his spine almost burning with overstimulation, his nerves thrumming with the rattling hiss of a kettle just about to boil. 

“Please,” he gasped against Ben, against each tooth-rattling thrust as Ben’s hips slapped against his arse, “oh, _please.”_

“Come for me,” Ben told him, wild-eyed and desperate himself, “‘Tage. I want you to come on my cock.” 

That was it for Hux. The sheer need in Ben’s voice pushed him over the edge, and it was as though his spinal cord had turned to molten gold within the knobbly bones of his vertebrae, spreading hotly through his flesh. His cock twitched as he came messily over himself, his spunk hot against his own skin as Ben fucked him through his orgasm, milking his prostate dry. He could feel Ben tensing against him, shivering in the wake of his own climax, and there it was, a last, merciless thrust against his oversensitive arse, another, up and up and up as Ben held himself so very still, quivering with each beat of his cock. 

It was only afterwards that Hux found himself sobbing like a small child while Ben held him tightly, soothed him. It was as though a dam had broken within him. No, not anything as sudden and as calamitous as that. It felt rather more like a slow crumble, a gentle erosion of that bulkhead in his heart that had stopped him from crying since he had thrown up this morning, after he had first seen the news. The absence of tears had been a drought of the soul; this a torrential rain. 

“It’s okay,” Ben whispered into the back of his head, “It’s okay. I haven’t hurt you, right?” 

“No, you haven’t,” Hux said, shakily. “I needed this, I need to let this out of my system.” 

“I understand,” Ben sighed softly, pressed a soft kiss against Hux’s hair. “I’m here, okay? Just cry it all out.” 

They clung to each other, desperate and afraid from the events of the day, shivering and weeping together. Hux sobbed disgracefully like a small child, and Ben wept silently, stroking his head until he calmed somewhat. There was something comforting about being this naked and vulnerable in front of another person, something cleansing about the tears, a sort of defiant struggle for trust and love and intimacy in the face of an all-too-human evil. 

_I should be ashamed,_ Hux thought, but he could not find it within him, not when Ben cried so easily and honestly. Hux could not judge Ben for his tears, could only take comfort in them, in sharing this fresh grief with him, the elemental charge of skin against skin in the soft endorphin buzz of his afterglow. 

“Stay with me,” he whispered to Ben as he slipped ever closer to sleep, closed his fingers over Ben’s hand, which rested lightly over the still-sticky skin of his belly. 

“I promise,” Ben replied, and they both fell into an exhausted slumber, curled together like starving children huddled for animal warmth. 

\---

_Tuesday, September 11th 2001, 8:43 PM_

_1 Cabot Square is burning, Hux realizes, when wisps of smoke begin to leak through the ventilation ducts in his office. It’s a sharp, eye-stinging smoke, of charring flesh and melting insulation, kerosene. He stumbles out of his office to find himself alone on the floor - how could he have missed the call to evacuate?_

_The stairwell leading downstairs is a crumbling, raw-edged cavity of shattered concrete, a wound gouged out of the building by forces unimaginable. Flames lick up the shaft from downstairs, and he is forced to crawl, choking, up the stairs until he reaches the top floor. The roof access door is unlocked - how strange - and he gulps mouthful after mouthful of the bitter London air as he staggers slowly to the edge of the roof and looks down._

_It isn’t just the Credit Suisse building, he realizes. Canary Wharf is a wasteland of gray dust and charred steel supports, flames licking at the skeletons of skyscrapers all the way down to the riverfront, and the red and orange light bounces off the Thames, hangs in the smoke to paint the world crimson and vermillion._

_He is the only human being left in this desolation. There is no way down. There is no way out. And there is no way to escape, except to jump -_

Hux sat bolt upright in bed, struggling his way out of the sheets and comforter, his heart fluttering like a terrified bird in his chest. He was drenched in a cold sweat, rills of it trickling out of his hair, down the back of his neck to roll slowly down his spine. Reality began to reassert itself as he took stock of his surroundings. The relentless homogeneity of hotel decor, the dead black screen of the television in front of the bed. Floral wallpaper and drawn curtains, and Queens outside that soundproofed plate glass window. The air outside would be eerily silent, he realized, a terrifying lack of noise by a major airport. US airspace was probably still closed at this point. 

Hux heard the hard click of the bedside lamp switch, felt a warm hand reaching out to cover his own as the light bounced softly off the walls, fingers twining with his. He turned his head to the left to find Ben awake, his dark eyes shadowed with concern. That brief touch banished the last shreds of his nightmare, and he realized, as he started acknowledging his body’s signals, that he was now hungry enough to be trembling from that, and not just his dream itself. 

“Bad dream?” Ben asked as he let go of Hux’s hand, propped himself slowly up on his elbows. His unruly hair was now a minor disaster of tangles, and Hux felt a ridiculous urge to lean in and smooth down a few of those locks. 

“Yes,” he said, tried to laugh and found the sound hollow and empty. “I dreamt that I was trapped in my office building back in London, and it was on fire. There was no way out except to jump.”

“Did you?” Ben asked, “In the nightmare, I mean.”

Hux took a deep breath, and then another, sighed. “I woke up before I did.” He rolled his head back, stretching out his stiff shoulders, realized that Ben had left him slightly but pleasantly sore. It wasn’t agony - far from it. The sensation increased his awareness of his own body, of nerve endings he had never thought to tease until now.

“I would have, you know,” Ben murmured thoughtfully, his gaze still veiled with concern along with something else that Hux could not name. 

“Jumped?” Hux asked, realizing that he knew next to nothing about Ben. He was kind, strong. Generous and thoughtful in bed. _Is this where we get to know each other now?_ It felt superfluous in the wake of their fuck, but Hux was genuinely curious.

“If I’d been in either of the towers at the WTC,” Ben clarified, “Isn’t such a bad way to go, compared to fire or being crushed alive under rubble. A lurch in your stomach, an exhilarating freefall, and then the end. I’d be whooping with joy until the crunch.” 

Hux thought about it, found a certain sense and freedom in what Ben had described even as his mind’s eye shied away from the inevitable landing. “That’s not how I’d picture anyone leaping to their death.” 

“Well, yeah,” Ben chuckled, a faint dark humor playing across his face, “It’s probably gonna be more solemn if you’re with someone you love. You hold hands and promise to be together for the rest of your lives, which isn’t going to be very long, and then you step off.”

“There was a song about that, you know,” Hux mused, “Back in ‘93, when I turned 21. _Come to my house tonight/ we can be together in the nuclear sky.”_

 _“We will dance in the poison rain/ and we can stay a while in heaven today.”_ Ben finished the quote. “I know the song. Stay Together. Suede.” 

Hux blinked a little in brief surprise. “I didn’t think they were this popular in the US.”

“They weren’t. I dated an English girl in my freshman year of college, ‘95. She was obsessed with Brett Anderson.” It was as though the sex had opened a necessary channel of communication between them, one that let Ben share his thoughts so frankly. 

Hux laughed, a little embarrassed. “To be absolutely honest,” he said, “I think I liked them so much back then because I fancied him, I just never admitted it to myself.” Ben would have been 18 in his freshman year of university, which put four years between their ages.

“Until me,” Ben said, oddly serious.

Hux nodded, once. “Until you.” He shifted against the sheets as a fresh stab of hunger reminded him that he had consumed only a pastry and one and a half cups of coffee today, that he desperately needed calories, especially after the strenuous exertion of the afternoon. Lube and spunk had dried on his skin and left him feeling sticky, itchy and flaky, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. “Are you hungry?” he asked Ben.

“Yeah,” said Ben, “What are you thinking of doing about it?” 

Hux shrugged, found the room acceptably stable. Somehow he expected the world to tip away from under his feet - the last vestiges of the nightmare, he thought. “I’d like a shower first, and then we can decide?” 

“Good idea. It’s probably a little rude to go have dinner reeking of come and sex sweat.” The understatement in Ben’s statement brought a brief smile to Hux’s face. _Clever,_ he thought, _he’s clever, too._

They leaned against each other in the shower, under a deluge of hot, steamy water that sluiced and bounced off their shoulders, their faces, the planes of their backs. The heat seemed to strip Hux bare, scour him clean, and it was the best nonsexual sensation he had felt today. He traced the moles on Ben’s soapy skin, ran his hand up the side of his neck to smooth down his wet hair. It felt as though he were rediscovering Ben anew, finally able to place that narrow face, that sharp jawline in the contexts in which they belonged. 

_His name is Ben Solo. He’s from Boston. He’s 25. And God, I think I could love him._ The thoughts provoked another stirring of fear in Hux’s chest, one that he recognized the moment it sank its icy fangs into his heart. _I don’t want to lose him. But I don’t even know if he’s mine to lose, and I’m afraid to ask._

\---

_Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, 10:19 PM_

“What can I get you?” the waitress at the small diner asked them. She was older, in her 40s, Hux thought, her frowsy blonde hair pinned up in a chignon on the back of her head. She looked tired, but then everyone else did under the unforgiving lights overhead. 

“Coffee, please,” Hux told her, as he glanced down the laminated menu. He knew from his ghostly reflection in the window beside their booth that he looked hollow-eyed and vaguely stunned, vacant like some kind of revenant crawling out of a still-open grave. The worn vinyl seat creaked softly beneath his weight, slippery against the seat of his wool trousers.

“And you?” she asked Ben, who had already put his menu down. His dark hair hung damp over his forehead, the ends curling as it began to dry. He had pulled a hoodie over his t-shirt to ward off the evening chill before they had left Hux’s hotel room, and it softened the impressive width of his shoulders, hid his muscular arms from view. Dressed like this he did not look 25 - he barely looked 18. 

“Diet, please, light ice, and I’ll have the all-day breakfast with bacon and scrambled eggs, home fries, and wheat toast,” Ben rattled his order off as though it were the same one he made every day. Perhaps it was, in some diner in Massachusetts. “Thanks.” His restless fingers played with his fork and knife, before he started rolling the paper napkin ring into a tight little scroll, tapped it idly against the table.

“I’ll get that in,” she told Ben, and then turned to Hux. “Would you like me to give you a minute more?” 

“No, I think I know what I want,” he said as he put the menu down on the chipped melamine tabletop, aware that he was still exhausted despite the nap he had just taken, attributed it to low blood sugar. “I’ll have the roast beef on toast, with extra gravy.” 

“Roast beef on toast, extra gravy,” the waitress repeated, scrawling the order on her ticket pad. “We’ll get that right out for you,” she said, and then vanished in back through the swinging kitchen doors. 

Hux remained silent afterwards, unwilling to puncture this moment. The streets of Greater Jamaica had been oddly quiet - subdued, even, as he and Ben had wandered out of the hotel in search of something other than room-service food. It seemed that New York, and likely the rest of the US existed in a sort of flinching hush, a breath-holding wait for more atrocities and horrors to reveal themselves. Hux knew that feeling well, had thought himself inured to it from the many IRA bombings in London and the rest of England, proper. It was the scope and scale of what had happened here in the US that left him so shocked and traumatized. 

The waitress returned with Ben’s soft drink and Hux’s coffee, and he stirred cream into it as she lingered at their booth. “You’re not travelers stuck here, are you?” she asked, softly.

“I’m afraid we are,” Hux sighed in reply. He took a sip of his coffee, felt the heat spread through the pit of his belly to warm him from within, do what the wool of his coat and waistcoat had somehow failed to do against the cool breeze outside. 

“Have you both got a place to stay?” she asked them, “I’ve got a friend who has space in her apartment.” 

“I do, thank you,” Hux said, touched by her kindness, “I hadn’t yet checked out of my hotel when I saw the news.” 

“And he’s let me crash with him,” Ben interjected, “So I’m good.” 

The waitress swallowed hard, fought back tears. “You’re English, aren’t you? I’m sorry you had to see this.” The tremor in her voice made Hux think of shame and anguish, a vulnerability that brought to mind an old photograph of a woman forcibly stripped and shaved in the streets, punished for being a collaborator in the postwar period. 

_She’s ashamed of us seeing her country wounded like this, of having America’s image of invulnerability torn open for all to see,_ Hux thought. “No, don’t be,” he told her, tried to sound as reassuring as he could, “I would have seen this on the news if I were still in London and been just as horrified. Besides, this isn’t the first time I’ve been a bystander in a - a terrorist attack, I suppose.” 

He cleared his throat, continued. “I’d just left Barclays to take up my job at Credit Suisse in 1995. The building I work in is on 1 Cabot Square, in Canary Wharf, one of London’s two financial districts. In February ‘96, the Provos IRA set off a truck bomb near the South Quay light rail station, it was roughly a fifteen minute walk from my workplace. I had been working late; I was just going home when I heard the detonation from the Canary Wharf Tube station. Two people died, many others were injured. That wasn’t the first IRA bombing in London, and it definitely was not the last.” 

The waitress sat down on an empty chair by their booth, sighed wearily, her face terribly naked. Hux recognized the weight of grief that bore down on her shoulders, had seen it in Ben’s movements and posture all day. “Is it okay for me to ask you how you dealt afterwards?” she asked him, “Just knowing that you could be murdered by terrorists at random for something you can’t help?” 

“Well.” It took a few moments and a sip of coffee for Hux to organize his thoughts and attempt to explain something that he had never consciously quantified before. 

“What happened here is beyond any of my experiences - it’s just so vast,” he said cautiously, the words drip-dripping slowly out of him like blood from a reopened wound. “But I kept going because one has to. It’s tempting to withdraw and harden yourself, make a boundary of your life and never let anyone cross that line.” He scribed the imaginary boundary on the melamine tabletop with his index finger, eradicated it with a sweep of his palm. He wanted to believe his own words so very much at this point, hoped that neither Ben nor the waitress would recognize him for a fraud. “It’s terribly lonely, and it’s so hard, and you’re making yourself suffer, and you’re giving them exactly what they want. Life has to go on, because their goal is to disrupt our lives, and if we let that happen, they win.”

The waitress sighed heavily. “I don’t know. That feels disrespectful, somehow - so many people are dead,” she said doubtfully after a few moments of silence. 

This question was easier to answer, but saying it was just as hard as before. Hux shook his head against his own sorrow, fought the tears that threatened to spill out of his eyes. “It really isn’t. We owe it to the dead to keep living. They were living their lives when this happened, and they wanted -” his voice broke there, and it was an effort of will to finish the sentence, “- nothing more than to get through the day. They can’t do it any more, so we must live for them.”

She nodded, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue before her tears could smear her eyeliner, blinked hard. “Your orders should be ready by now,” she said, despite no obvious sign from the kitchen that the food was ready. Hux watched her retreat into the kitchen again, and sighed softly over his hot cup of coffee.

“That was well said,” Ben told him from across the table, his dark eyes bright with unshed tears. 

“I wasn’t trying very hard,” Hux said, blinking his own tears away. He put his cup down on the table, glanced down at his own hands, at the lines of his palms. “I’m not sure it was entirely articulate, myself.”

“No, it was.” Ben reached across the table and let his fingertips brush up against Hux’s own. His touch was cold, wet from the condensation on his glass. “Thanks.” 

Hux looked up, slightly startled at the coldness of Ben’s fingers. “Mhm?” Exhaustion had left him slow on the uptake. Shock too, perhaps. 

Ben began to pull his hand away from Hux’s, something unreadable flashing across his face. “It was something I needed to hear, too.” 

_No,_ Hux thought, a brief panicked jab in his diaphragm as Ben started to pull away from him. He reached out hurriedly and grabbed at Ben’s left hand, squeezed it gently to warm his skin. “It’s okay, it’s just that your hand was cold from the glass.”

“It’s okay?” Ben echoed. He closed his fingers over Hux’s knuckles, returning the touch. 

Hux nodded. “It is.”

\---

_Wednesday, September 12, 2001, 12:10 AM_

Nether Hux nor Ben wanted to return to the hotel room after they’d finished their late dinner. Instead they whiled the minutes away in the little diner over slices of lemon meringue pie, listening to the conversations of other patrons in the gaps of silence unfilled by the clink of fork against plate, or the soft clip of coffee cup against table.

Hux felt conspicuously overdressed in this little diner - the other patrons were all casually dressed. Tired men with rough hands and baseball caps, worn-out women in cashier uniforms, a stray student or two from one of the CUNY campuses in Queens. Something left Hux ill at ease, feeling strangely tense, and he only realized what it was when Ben asked him a question.

“‘Tage,” Ben asked, his voice soft and low so as not to carry, “What do you do about the anger?” That was what he had sensed in the air, a slow fulminant anger filling the raw emotional hollows carved out by grief and horror. He could see it, that pinpoint rage in Ben’s dark eyes, in the set of another patron’s shoulders, behind the tears in the waitress’ eyes. He could feel his pulse racing, his hands wanting to tremble despite his sure knowledge that he was not the target of that anger. 

“I -” Hux started to say, paused. “I’m not sure.” He picked up his coffee cup and took another sip, chasing the tart richness of the pie out of his mouth. It felt wrong to be talking about rage and anger with his lips and tongue sweetened from sugar and delicate, fluffy meringue.

Ben seemed to sag a bit, deflating, almost as he slouched in his seat. It was odd how he could compress himself, almost. His strong bones now made him look oddly fragile, brittle to the mind’s touch. “Weren’t you angry with the IRA, after ‘96?” 

Hux shook his head briefly. “Not personally, no,” he said, “I think we’re comparing apples and oranges. Sinn Féin was using terrorism to try and pressure the British government into negotiating according to their terms, which is deplorable, but at least I understand their motivations. What happened here is - ” Hux sighed, shrugged, lost for words. _This is something you do only if you want your opponent destroyed utterly_ , he thought but did not say, knowing that it would only hurt Ben.

Ben laughed bitterly at that. “So anything’s justified if you tell yourself you’re at war?” _Bitterness doesn’t become you, Ben,_ Hux thought, felt a twinge within at how the anger and pain seemed to twist at Ben’s face, adding a uneasy manic cast to the bleakness in his eyes. 

“I didn’t say that, exactly,” Hux said soothingly, cautious of the raw emotion he felt welling up within. He realized he was angry, that there was a sharp indignant burning somewhere beneath his heart at the amount of pain these events had inflicted upon Ben. “I don’t believe that, but it doesn’t mean that nobody else will. Sell someone a big role, tell them that they will be the hero that will change everything and save the world, and they’ll trip over themselves to do whatever it takes. I believe that’s how most modern militaries train their soldiers nowadays, and one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” 

“You’re so - cynical.” Ben favored Hux with a weak smile, and he was suddenly quite glad of his seat, of the table like a bulwark between them. He wanted very badly to just haul Ben out of this booth, to walk him down the streets until he found his hotel room again, and to kiss the pain away from his sensual mouth, that exquisite face.

Hux grasped instead for that wordless rapport between them, kept his voice light and his tone arch. Speech seemed so inadequate in this situation. “I work for a predatory Swiss bank that is probably still stockpiling Nazi-looted money and currently serving as one of the world’s largest tax evasion schemes.” Hux snuffed the flame of his own anger out, used black humor to starve it of fuel, because he knew that he would not be able to control himself the moment he lost his temper. This was not the time and place, he told himself.

“How do you sleep at night, if they’re this bad?” Ben asked him simply. A faint relief unfurled in Hux’s chest - Ben had taken the bait and could now be drawn carefully towards less distressing topics, which was good. Hux wasn’t sure how much longer he could remain calm and serious whilst surrounded by other grieving, angry people. 

“Poorly, as you’ve seen,” Hux said facetiously, “But really, all life is compromise, until you run into something you can’t compromise with. For me I never see that end of my employer, and it’s easy to ignore. No, they just send me around the world advising and negotiating corporate mergers and IPOs. I could resign out of a sense of ethics, but what else would I do? Work for another bank? I’m fairly sure similar things happen in any large financial concern.” This was something Hux had never dared to say aloud before, and he wondered internally at the effect that Ben had upon him.

Ben smiled again, this time wider, stronger, though his eyes were still haunted with pain and fury. “So you’re saying I should join a credit union.” 

Hux chuckled softly in reply, hoping to deflect Ben’s rage. “I highly recommend it, in fact. They’re a lot less likely to rob you incrementally through ‘overdraft fees’ and other sausage-slicing dogshite. Just don’t tell my boss I said that,” he whispered conspiratorially at the end. 

Hux asked for the bill when they had finished their slices of pie, only to be greeted by a stocky fireplug of a man who had emerged from the kitchens. “Lisa told me that you two were stranded here in New York.” His brawny arms were thickly furred beneath the short sleeves of his t-shirt, his thinning dark hair starting to go iron-gray.

“Yeah,” Ben said. He took a last sip of his soft drink, which was mostly melted ice at this point. 

“Well, I’m Mike.” He shook both their hands, his grip rough but firm. “I own this place and I’m not going to charge you for supper while you’re stuck here for who knows how long. Have a good night, and God bless.” In normal circumstances this very American invocation of God would have left Hux feeling slightly uncomfortable, but tonight was different.

Hux paused in the middle of retrieving his wallet, touched by Mike’s generosity. “I’d gladly accept your offer if I were paying out of my pocket,” he said, “but I was here on business. My expenses are currently being covered by a large Swiss bank, and you might as well accept their money.” 

“Yeah, take every opportunity to stick it to the Man, you know?” Ben kept his facial expression exaggeratedly vacant, said that in a ridiculous imitation of a stoner voice.

Mike’s laugh was a deep belly chuckle that emanated from the core of his stout torso. “You want me to charge you extra, is that what you want?” he asked them in mock indignation.

A brief ripple of amusement sounded around them in the diner at Ben’s little joke and Mike’s false outburst, the sound tinged with a tiny relief, a brief respite from shock and heartbreak.

Hux found himself smiling, found that the expression felt strangely foreign on his face. It had been so for far too long. “I wouldn’t go as far as that,” he shrugged, “but really, let me pay for our dinners.” 

“Fine,” Mike said, beamed tiredly at them, “If you’re going to throw my kindness in my face like that. But I’ll have the last word. Dessert is on us.” He shook Hux’s hand once more, and took his credit card back to the counter to process the payment. 

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Mike to come back with the receipts and a pen. Hux pocketed his credit card, and then signed his name across the bottom of the merchant copy, left Lisa a generous tip. “Thanks,” Mike said as he took the pen and receipt back, “Stay safe. By the way, kid? Stay close to your sugar daddy and you’ll be all right.”

“Oh my God,” Ben breathed, doubling over in his seat. “Firstly,” he managed, between gasps of laughter, “I’m not a kid, I’m 25. And secondly, he’s not my sugar daddy.” 

“No, no -” Hux said wickedly. The levity soothed him and he drew strength from it. “Credit Suisse is my sugar daddy. He’s just hovering around like a remora.” That said with a nod to Ben, whose laughter had turned into an exhausted, punchy giggle. 

“Which would make you a shark, if I’m a remora,” Ben shook his head, unruly hair bouncing on his brow with the movement.

Hux shrugged. “That’s not an inaccurate description of an investment banker,” he said, overly straight-faced, utterly relieved to see Ben smiling without either rage or sorrow in his gaze. _That’s good. Keep him amused._

“Bankers and lawyers, right?” Mike laughed along with Hux’s tired joke, “No mercy, get all excited at the smell of blood.” 

“Cold-blooded, haven’t evolved for millions of years, exactly,” Hux said. He held no illusions about how his profession was viewed by laymen, especially those without the money and power to avail themselves of his services. 

Ben took hold of his hand after they left the diner, and they walked slowly back to the hotel, their steps slightly hesitant, like courting lovers. It spoke volumes about how strange this day was when Hux didn’t feel the usual shyness or nerves being this close to someone else in public. Something occurred to him five or six minutes into the walk. “Ben, you aren’t upset about that sugar daddy joke, I hope. Or the remora one.”

“No,” Ben said simply. “I know I can always pay my own way, so there’s no real sting in it, plus I know you’re just being generous. But you know, he’s not entirely off the mark. You dress so well, look so good in it, and you have that killer RP accent. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought you came straight out of sugar daddy fantasy-land.” Hux felt Ben’s warm sound fingers squeeze down around his, the touch reinforcing the sincerity in everything he had said. 

He did not know what to do in response to the compliment concealed within that gentle jibe, fell back on the easy familiarity of self-deprecating humor. “You mean prompt and punctual with payments, too tired and busy to actually to expect much in return. Yes, I suppose I am all of that.”

Ben stopped dead in his tracks, forced Hux to stop too, and they stood awkwardly beneath a streetlight where moths danced and flitted to their tiny dooms. “‘Tage,” Ben asked, “why do you keep tearing yourself down like that? You say it in a jokey manner, but you’re not really joking, are you?” 

Hux could not face the sorrow in Ben’s dark eyes, was afraid to search within himself for its source. He stared, instead, on the fluttering of wings overhead, faint transient silhouettes of all-too-brief lives. “It’s British humor,” he said numbly.

“No,” Ben breathed, let go of Hux’s hand to hold him gently by the shoulders. “British humor is dry, sharp, clever, but nowhere in Rowan Atkinson’s skits did I see a requirement for verbal self-mutilation.” He could no longer evade that gentleness, that keen perception that cut painlessly to the quick and laid him bare.

“I - I do it,” he said, in a deep shuddery breath, looking down at the pavement beneath his feet, “because it’s safe. If I direct my wit at someone, I run the risk of hurting them. And it’s easy to get others to laugh along when you make yourself the butt of a joke. It defuses people, distracts them from anger.” He looked up then to stare back into Ben’s eyes, saw the comprehension in that gaze. The electric light overhead bounced off Ben’s hair in a tangled halo, and for a second a small winged shape interposed itself between them, swooping up and away.

“Anger that they might take out on you,” Ben murmured softly, his fingers tightening on Hux’s shoulders enough to ache a little through the canvas and wool of his coat. Hux remained silent, amazed at how easily Ben had seen to the fragile heart of him.

“I don’t know who hurt you like that,” Ben continued, shaking his head. He looked as though he had a good idea, but was also too circumspect to say it out loud. “They prob’ly started when you were young, ‘cause you do it so easily and constantly. But you don’t have to do it around me, because I won’t ever -” He paused to catch his breath, gazed wretchedly at Hux. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Ben.” Hux leaned into Ben’s shoulder, spread his hands across that strong, broad back, felt Ben’s heart booming like a racehorse’s against his own. “Since we met you’ve been making me wonder what I did to deserve your kindness here, in a time like this.”

“Nothing.” Ben whispered as he returned the hug, his breath warm and ticklish against the shell of Hux’s ear. “Absolutely nothing. You don’t ever have to do anything to deserve kindness - it shouldn’t even have a prerequisite. And you’re kind to me, you really are. But you’re so afraid to accept it from others.”

Hux sighed long and low, and gave Ben another grateful squeeze before they pulled apart and resumed walking back to the hotel, hand in hand.

\---

_Wednesday, September 12, 2001, 12:44 PM_

Wakefulness came slowly to Hux, not in a moment of instantaneous clarity. Rather it encroached upon his mind like a gentle tide, rising warmly until he was engulfed in it. He opened his eyes to find himself alone in bed, blinked and shifted to prop himself up on an elbow. He could hear the water running in the bathroom, the sussurant whisper of the shower head, the faint plash of water hitting the cubicle. _Ben,_ he thought, _Ben’s in there, he hasn’t left._ He sighed in relief and sat up, glanced at the alarm clock to find that it was past noon. 

Hux yawned despite himself as he swung his legs off the side of the bed. He and Ben had tumbled wearily into bed shortly after they had returned to the hotel room last night, and he had gone to sleep with Ben’s breath stirring the hair on the back of his head, Ben’s arm snug around his waist as they lay tucked like spoons in a drawer. His body clock was now utterly scrambled without hope of repair, and he dreaded having to readjust to London time after he went back. 

And then he thought more about going back to his lonely flat with its pristine furnishings, the shelves of books left untouched in the wake of his busy work weeks, realized that none of his neighbors would have noticed if he had died yesterday. His housekeeper would let herself in with her key - he was never there during her fortnightly visits, in any event, and nobody would have cared until his name came up in the casualty list - if anyone outside of his office even noticed he was missing.

All it took was the flapping of a butterfly’s wings - Hux knew of several international banks and investment companies that had offices in the former World Trade Center complex. _I could have accepted the offer from Citibank instead_ , he thought, _or Cantor Fitzgerald, and then been transferred from London. I could have been asked to meet clients yesterday in either of the towers instead of Monday at 14 Wall Street._

Hux shivered, found himself drawn helplessly towards memories of the Docklands bombing. _Nobody would have noticed if I had died there, either. Maybe Dad might have, or Maratelle, but they would only care about my death for the sympathy it would invoke._ He thought of the birth mother he had known so briefly, of her soft voice and the smell of her hands. He could no longer remember her face, and had never been permitted to keep a photograph of her. _Would she miss me? Does she miss me now?_

_I can’t go back to London and continue as I have,_ Hux thought, closing his fingers over his knees, _because it’s no life at all. I’m not living. I’m just killing time, and what for? What am I waiting for?_

“‘Tage,” Ben said as he emerged from the bathroom still magnificently naked, water running in tiny droplets down his muscled chest, “Penny for your thoughts?” The question shattered his reverie, drew him out of introspection. 

"That’s not nearly enough now if we account for inflation,” Hux said absently as he clawed his way back to the here and now, realized that it took a significant effort of will to keep his gaze trained upwards at Ben’s face. 

“Cute,” Ben shrugged as he rummaged in his backpack and hauled out a fresher-looking pair of jeans, started to step into them. “Keep being clever like that, and see if I ask you before I order lunch. But seriously, what are you thinking?” 

“About London,” Hux said, banishing visions of his hated stepmother weeping publicly and conspicuously over some kind of memorial marker, “and what I have to do once I go back. What about you?” 

“Food, mostly,” Ben said as he tugged his jeans over his hips, fastened the top button and zipped himself up. “You’re not one of those pineapple on pizza people, are you?” 

“What’s wrong with pineapple on pizza?” Hux asked, nonplussed. It was a lot easier to pay attention to Ben’s voice now that he was partially dressed. 

“Ew.” Ben shot him a vague aggrieved look before he pulled his t-shirt on, tugging it over his head. “Of course you’d like it, you’re English, you degenerate,” he said through the thin fabric. “Next you’re going to tell me you like anchovies on pizza too.” 

Hux let out a brief huff of amusement at Ben’s hyperbole. “Actually, no. I like them in general, but they’re far too salty for pizza.” 

“OK, good.” Ben’s head popped out the collar of his t-shirt, and he tugged down at the hem to make sure it didn’t catch up on his back. “You’re not a complete loss to humanity. I think I can work with this.” He reached back with a hand, tugged his damp hair free of his shirt collar, leaving the locks to bounce briefly against his broad shoulders. “Name one topping that you like on pizza.” 

“Mushrooms,” said Hux, going for a safe bet. 

Ben nodded, raised an eyebrow. “Good neutral choice, not bad. Do you like pepperoni?” 

Hux tilted his head to the side, ambivalent. “A bit rich, but acceptable in small doses. How about ham instead?” 

“Good choice,” Ben said, “as long as nobody puts pineapple in with it. Extra cheese, yes or no?” 

Hux wrinkled his nose, thought of all the fat in the cheese melting out of it as the pizza cooked, and the grease soaking into the dough base, felt his stomach protest weakly at the visual. “I’d say no.” 

“A conservative, I see. Okay.” Ben searched the pockets of his worn pair of jeans, left sitting on the hotel room floor, and pulled his wallet and mobile phone out of the pockets. That done, he crossed over to the TV console and opened the drawer, looking for the helpful little book of restaurant delivery phone numbers that the hotel had compiled for guests who did not want to avail themselves of room service. 

Hux entered the still-steamy bathroom to relieve himself, and then stepped into the shower afterwards, heard Ben’s velvety voice through the thin bathroom door as he turned the shower spigot on. Warm water hissed softly around him, obliterating all sound from outside the room, and he turned his face up and towards the shower head, letting the water play over his face and chest. He turned the water off, soaped up. His cheeks were rough and stubbly under his fingertips, and he realized he needed to get his toiletries out of his suitcase so he could shave and brush his teeth. 

After he was done showering he dried off roughly with the damp towel and then stepped out to find his suitcase on the floor at the left side of the bed, where he had slept, and popped it open to retrieve his toiletry bag, grabbed a fresh undershirt and a pair of boxers as well. He was down to his last pair of socks, but they would still be acceptably clean for tomorrow if he didn’t spend too much time in shoes today. 

Ben was talking to someone else on his phone as Hux retreated back into the bathroom, but he left the door open so the steam could dissipate. That still did not clear the mirror in time, so he took up one of the face towels and wiped the condensation off manually, then began to brush his teeth. 

Yeah, I’m okay, Mom, really,” Ben’s rich voice drifted in from the room proper. “No, I didn’t know that two of the planes were hijacked out of Logan - Mom, I haven’t kept up with the news, because it’s too depressing right now with Manhattan just over there.” 

There was a beat of silence, and then another as Ben listened to his mother on the other side of the line, in Boston. “No Mom, you really don’t have to,” he continued, bit off the end of that sentence as he was interrupted. “Well, yes, I’d like out of New York at this point, but - ” 

Hux rinsed his mouth and spat, wiped his lips with a towel, before he retrieved his travel tube of shaving cream and his safety razor. He lathered up quickly, and then started paring away at the stubble on his cheeks, slowly and carefully. Ben’s voice was now a counterpoint to the soft whisper of the blade against his skin. He knocked excess shaving cream into the sink, lathered up again for a second pass. “I know where I got my stubbornness from, Mom, so I guess if you’re going to, you’re going to. It’s gonna be more than four hours of driving, are you sure you want to?” 

“Okay. Okay. I understand.” Ben said as Hux started to shave against the grain. It wasn’t anything as close as what he preferred, but it wasn’t as though he wanted to fly with his straight razor. “No, I’m not mad. I’m just worried about you. No, I know you’re worried about me too. Okay. JFK tomorrow morning, at 9, 9:30? You’d have to leave at 5 AM. 10’s a better time, you can actually get up at an uncivilized hour instead of an inhumane one.” Hux’s hand slipped then, just over the pulse point at his neck. Blood began to bead and well up on his pale skin, dripped in a tiny trickle down his throat. _He’s leaving tomorrow,_ he thought, tried to ignore why he had been so startled by the news. It wasn’t as though they knew each other very well at all. _And yet,_ his traitor heart whispered, _it’s as though he’s known you forever._

__

__

He finished shaving, and then washed up, dabbed at the cut with a square of toilet paper. “You’d better take the Charger then,” Ben said over the phone, “so I can take the wheel on the drive back.” Blood continued to leak out of the shallow cut, and he sighed, fumbled around in his shaving bag for his styptic pencil. 

“No, Mom,” Ben continued to say, unaware of the bloodshed in the next room, “the Charger’s not a death-trap, because I didn’t let Dad anywhere near the engine, transmission or brakes when we did the restoration, what, do you think I’m suicidal?” 

Hux dabbed at the cut with the stick of anhydrous aluminum sulfate, ignored the stinging in his eyes and in the cut as he wiped the little dribble of blood off his skin, checked to make sure he had done a decent job shaving. 

“Ha ha, Mom. Very funny. Look, I’ve ordered a pizza for lunch, and the guy’s gonna get here any minute, so I’mma hang up now. I love you, Mom. See you tomorrow,” Ben said, and then there was a soft sigh and the sound of his phone clattering on a nightstand. “You probably heard most of that,” he continued, as Hux stepped out out of the bathroom. 

“I did, yes.” Hux went through his open suitcase, pulling out a fresh shirt and pair of trousers, another set of braces. He’d worry about his waistcoat and coat later - this was an attempt at decency, at making sure that the pizza delivery guy wouldn’t be blinded by his London-pasty chest and belly. 

Hux did not want to talk about Ben’s phone call, did not want to think of having to leave New York himself. The queen-sized bed stood between them both, its width an immeasurable gulf. It seemed ridiculous that they had managed to bridge the gap yesterday, with touch and taste expanding to sate hunger and need. Now they stared wordlessly at each other as though they both stood on opposite sides of a newly walled-off border, afraid to broach the topic. 

\---

_Wednesday, September 12th, 2001, 1:19 PM_

The pizza delivery guy turned out to be a woman, and she left having deposited an enormous boxed pizza and a cold 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke into Ben’s hands. Hux shoved his laptop to the side of the desk so there was room for the pizza, hauled up one of the spare chairs in the room, and sat facing the narrow side of the desk so he could eat together with Ben. 

They ate in silence at first, Ben being too hungry to converse and Hux not having the heart to.

“‘Tage,” Ben asked. He was now well into his second slice of pizza, “I was thinking about what you told me last night, about compromise. Have you ever run into anything that you couldn’t compromise with?” 

_Yes,_ Hux’s heart said. “Not yet, no,” his mouth said instead. He discarded the crust-end of his first slice, glanced at the box between them and picked a second slice up. He had little appetite, so he picked at the toppings instead, popped a slice of mushroom in his mouth.

“What would you do if you did?” Ben continued. 

Hux sighed as he thought about the prospect. “I’d resign, probably, protest it in my resignation letter.” The world started to sharpen in Hux’s vision, details coming out of fuzziness into focus as a curious rage began to well in his chest, its source unknown.

Ben frowned thoughtfully, poured some diet soft drink into one of the hotel glasses. “You’d just get replaced by someone with fewer scruples than you,” he murmured at last. 

“It isn’t really about improving their behavior at that point.” Hux said. Something was turning, aligning in his head as he thought about the answer to Ben’s question. “It’s about whether I can stand to look myself in the mirror when I shave every morning.”

“So there has to be a -” Ben hesitated briefly, shot a glance at Hux over the rim of his glass, “A point where you realize you can’t rationalize shit any more. I suppose it’s real easy to just keep pushing the goalpost back - it’s for the good of the company, it’s for their own good.” 

“It would be, yes,” Hux said, thinking of the many times he had done so. Guilt tinged the anger he felt roiling within. “And I know it’s easy to say that I’d leave,” he continued as his thoughts began to organize themselves in his head, clicking into place. “I’m an educated white bloke with ample experience, working in a male-dominated business. Finding a job would be relatively painless, given my CV, my savings and my stock options. But it’s something I can do, that someone else less fortunate cannot afford to.”

“So you know my mother’s going to drive here to pick me up, tomorrow,” Ben said. Ben’s tendency to segue in and out of diverse topics was something that amused and frustrated Hux in equal amounts - he was learning a lot from some of his more erudite digressions, but it also meant it took about three times the time and words to get to the bottom of any conversation. 

Hux picked a piece of ham off the pizza slice, ate that too. “I had wondered why you didn’t just take the train home yesterday. It isn’t that long to Boston.” 

“Why, indeed,” Ben huffed, bitterness creeping in the edges of his voice. 

Hux paused, gazed into Ben’s face and saw the naked hurt and longing there. _“Oh,”_ he breathed, a single indrawn breath, exactly the sound he would have made if Ben had slid a knife under his sternum to lodge just right of his heart, its fine smooth blade transfixing his liver and diaphragm. “Whatever the bloody fuck are we going to do now?” he asked, after a long, aching silence. 

“My biological granddad was a spree killer, you know,” Ben said, _apropos_ of nothing, something that Hux took as another one of his odd digressions. “He shot up a school where he was teaching and then went home and shot my grandma. She died giving birth to my mom, and my uncle. I only found out about him when someone brought an old newspaper to school when I was 13, and I became ‘Serial Killer Ben’ until I changed schools.”

“I -” Hux’s mouth hung foolishly open for a few moments, once he realized that Ben was not in fact joking. “I’m sorry to hear that. Anything more than that would be just a platitude.” There was something horribly American about what Ben had told him, a kind of odd Midwestern Gothic about the tale. 

“It doesn’t upset me any more,” Ben shook his head, but the gesture looked more like one of banishment then one of dismissal. “It’s just that now I can’t stop thinking about what one person can do to affect the lives of others, for better or for worse. My grandmother - I never got to know her because of what he did. My mom never got to know her mother. What songs would she have taught me? What stories would she have told? He didn’t just kill those children. He robbed them of their future, of all that possibility.” 

“Ben -” Hux said, scrabbling to find the right words. “You’ve made a difference to me. I think I could love you, Ben Solo.” 

Ben closed his eyes against those words, as though freshly wounded. “I _know_ I love you, Armitage Hux,” he said, “But I also know you have a life to go back to in London, and I could never be selfish enough to expect you to give that all up for a jobless trust fund hipster you just met in NYC.” 

It was as though Hux had returned to yesterday’s terrible morning, was suspended in that choking moment just before the second plane had hit the North Tower. _This is a little thing,_ he chided himself, _a little thing compared to the hundreds - no, thousands? - of people killed and injured. This is just heartbreak. I’ve been heartbroken, and I’ve continued._

 _It is never just heartbreak,_ his treasonous heart whispered against the cold logic he had erected as defense, a last soft breath leaving a bloom of condensation against steel. The only comfort he took in this was that Ben looked as miserable as he felt, which left him feeling like an utter cad. 

Fury came to his aid, fury and conviction that he had ignored for much too long. _No,_ Hux thought. He thought to last night at the diner and the invisible line he had drawn in the scratched melamine tabletop. _I will not retreat this time._ He put his half-eaten slice of pizza down on the paper plate that had come with the pizza delivery, stood up abruptly. 

“I don’t think you understand fully what you’re not asking me to give up, Ben Solo,” Hux said after a few more moments of thought. “You’re not asking me to give up 80 hour work weeks in a soul-eating profession, where all I do is make rich people richer by helping them steal from the poor. You’re not asking me to abandon my empty flat in London, which I see only before and after I fall into bed. You’re not asking me to leave behind a family that wouldn’t care if I had died in the World Trade Center yesterday.”

Now it was Ben’s turn to look foolish. Tears welled up in those rich brown eyes as he bit down on his lower lip, sucked in a slow shuddery breath. 

“Ben, I want to give it all up to be with you because the life I’m going to step away from is hardly any life at all. I told you last night we have to live for those who can’t any more, but I was trying to convince myself, not you. Not Lisa the waitress.” Hux continued. A tiny part of him remained slack-jawed and amazed at the words he was saying. The rest of him no longer possessed the ability to give a fuck. 

“You can’t mean that,” Ben whispered, as though he were afraid to accept reality at this point.

“What I’m saying is -” and Hux sucked in a long breath then, felt it fill his head with light, “You stayed with me when I needed you, yesterday. Let me stay with you now that you need me. There’s no bloody logistical problem at all. I’m here on a visa waiver, I can stay 90 days. If you’re worried about me resigning right out, then I’ll send my boss Phil an email telling him I need a week’s mental health break after what happened here. I can pack my bags into your death trap of a car, and go all the way to Boston with you so we can take some time to learn how this is going to work. What I cannot and will not do is abandon what we have even before we’ve even started.”

“‘Tage,” Ben sighed softly. The tears overflowed, ran down his cheeks, and he was standing up too. “I accept,” he gasped against Hux’s shoulder as they embraced. Ben’s hand and mouth were still greasy from the pizza, would leave stains on his dress shirt, but Hux was beyond caring - that was what dry cleaners were for. 

Hux pulled Ben’s mouth up to his and kissed him softly, tasted the salt of tears and the ghost of aspartame lingering in his spit, the faint acidity of cola, and could not bring himself to care. He slipped his left hand up beneath the hem of Ben’s t-shirt to caress the small of his back, nibbled at the narrow V of skin showing at his collar as he did so.

Hux began crowding Ben towards the bed in a slow, shuffled dance, their feet dragging through the thick pile of the carpet. “Wait,” Ben gasped, shivered, as Hux pulled his face away from his collarbone, paused to inhale the scent of his hair.

“Yes?” Hux asked him, impatiently. He thought about Ben pinned face-down on the mattress beneath him, sweat glistening off the muscles of his back and shoulders, down his thighs, and shuddered at the visual. There was something to this that he hadn’t considered before, a kind of rush from imagining someone so much bigger and stronger than him submitting to his desires.

Ben smiled sheepishly, his facial expression shaky, still on the edge of tears. “We’ll want to clean up first if you want something more than a blowjob. All this grease doesn’t play well with latex.” 

They shared a little laugh at that, and Hux let Ben go after a last kiss on the cheek. “Shall we start in the shower?” 

Ben glanced down at him, his gaze soft and serious. “After you went to all that trouble getting dressed?”

Hux shrugged at that. “I’m going to have to take off some of my clothing, regardless.” 

“Point,” Ben murmured. He ran the fingers of his left hand up the placket of Hux’s shirt, caressed the shell buttons briefly before working his way down from the hollow of his throat, tugging his shirttails loose from the high waistband of his fishtail-back trousers. 

“I’m not going to make it to the shower if you don’t stop,” Hux gasped against Ben’s mouth. To demonstrate he ground his hips back up against Ben’s, pressing their half-hard cocks together through frustrating layers of fabric. 

“That’s fine,” Ben whispered, his breath stirring strands of Hux’s hair. “We can always do that later.” He dropped instead to his knees and pressed his lips to the button fly of Hux’s trousers, exhaled hotly into the wool fabric. The rush of warmth made Hux’s skin tingle, sent a jab of desire and excitement zinging up his spine. 

Hux reached down to spread his fingers over the crown of Ben’s head, smoothed locks of hair away from his brow and caressed him idly, gently as he unbuttoned Hux’s trousers. “May I hold your hair while you suck me off?” he asked, utterly taken by the way Ben looked kneeling at his feet.

“Oh fuck,” Ben laughed, breaking the moment slightly. “How does everything automatically sound twice as sexy when you say it?”

Hux paused, tilted his head in gentle amusement. “You realize my accent doesn’t quite have that effect on me.” He kept stroking Ben’s hair, letting the slippery strands slide through his fingers. 

“I suppose mine wouldn’t, either,” Ben mused, his fingers still hooked into Hux’s half-open fly. Hux could feel the heat of his breath through the silk of his boxers, almost wanted to reach impatiently down and unbutton his trousers himself.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Hux said, thinking of how Ben had talked him through their first fuck. “You were immensely encouraging, yesterday. It’s all about how you say it.” 

“Mhm.” Ben shifted a little on his knees, leaned his weight forward to press his temple against Hux’s left hip. “Will you pull my hair, then? Talk dirty to me while you fuck my mouth?” 

Hux did not reply at first. He only twined his fingers into Ben’s dark hair and closed his fingers around a fistful of locks, tugged at him until his face was centered against the fly of his trousers again. “I thought you wanted to suck me off, you slut?” 

Ben groaned, shivered at the touch, his eyes falling shut at Hux’s gentle insult. He fumbled at the horn buttons of Hux’s trouser fly again, sprang him free. Hux was so aroused at this point that the cool air felt like an indirect caress against his skin. His shirt and undershirt were trapping so much heat next to his skin, left him feeling faintly feverish as Ben began to kiss and nibble at the head of his cock. 

Ren’s tongue was velvet-soft against Hux’s foreskin, leaving a rapidly cooling trail of spit as he began to lick a stripe up the underside of his cock, a slippery caress that left the skin of his thighs, his balls tingling with heat and hunger. 

“You’re hungry for me, aren’t you?” Hux managed to say, his voice growing hoarse with arousal, and Ben could only moan softly as Hux pulled at his hair again to guide that plush, sensual mouth. 

“Yes,” Ben breathed after a brief kiss to the head of Hux’s cock. Hux shut his eyes at the sensation, his eyelashes fluttering as he thrust himself forward into Ben’s willing mouth, into the spit-slick warmth of him. 

“You’re going to have to work harder if you actually want to taste me,” Hux murmured as he started to buck his hips up against Ben’s face. Otherwise I’ll just hold you at arm’s length and rub myself out on your face.” Ben kept his eyes shut and started to suck, gently at first, and then harder as Hux tugged again at his hair. “And don’t waste any time playing with yourself,” Hux said in a small burst of inspiration. “I’m not going to let you come until you please me sufficiently.” 

Ben shivered under Hux’s hand, and Hux wondered how hard those jeans were confining him, imagined Ben’s thick cock chafing against the metal zipper, and grinned at the thought. It was good, _so good,_ and it was oddly liberating to be this rough with a partner, to be fucking someone who trusted him enough for this.

The thought nearly pushed him off the edge, and he took another long breath, tried to ride the edge of it as Ben ran a careful right hand up the back of his thigh, long fingers curling around to brush gently against his inseam. “You’re going to take it all,” Hux told him shakily, “and swallow like a good boy.” He pulled his cock almost all the way out of Ben’s mouth slowly and carefully, savoring the heat building up in his balls and the base of his spine. 

Hux pulled again at Ben’s hair, made him look up, stared him in the eye. “Are you ready, then?” he asked, but Ben kept his lips wrapped around the head of his cock. That wicked clever tongue started flicking at his sensitive coronal ridge, swirling slowly around. Hux tensed and shivered against that movement, managed to hold back. He thrust more slowly into Ben’s mouth at that point, hissed softly in pleasure as Ben ran his teeth delicately against the shaft of his cock. 

“So clever,” Hux breathed between pants, as he eased himself home, the head of his cock clicking against Ben’s tonsils and then past, felt himself losing control. Ben was taking him, the whole length of his cock, down his throat. It was as though he was being eaten alive, engulfed, and he found himself groaning as he tried to hold back, failed and began to fall forever as he spent himself in that exquisite mouth. 

_“Take it,”_ Hux managed to growl, felt Ben’s throat working around him as he swallowed, and then his knees were wobbling, threatening to buckle as his relief overtook him. He felt Ben grab at his hips to steady him, fingers strong and bruising as he pressed his mouth to the sliver of skin between the waistband of his boxers and the hem of his undershirt. He let go of Ben’s hair, realizing then that his knuckles ached slightly, hissed a little as his oversensitive cock brushed against Ben’s t-shirt as he sank to his knees. 

Ben held him in those muscular arms, steadied him against his hard shoulder while he caught his breath. “Please don’t faint,” Ben murmured into his ear, “I don’t want to have to explain this at the ER.” 

Hux sucked in a long breath, another, let out a ridiculous hiccup of laughter. “No, I’m fine,” he said shakily, planted a kiss of his own just under Ben’s narrow jaw, against the pulse point of his neck. “You’re just very skilled.” 

Ben chuckled, the sound more like a rumble against Hux’s ear. “My hypothesis is proven,” he said as he began to stand up, helped Hux off the carpet briefly before lowering him down on top of the bed. 

“What hypothesis?” Hux asked, grinning wearily as Ben loomed over him, big hands sinking into the mattress to either side of his shoulders. 

“Everything does sound twice as sexy when it’s said in British.” Ben pressed his sticky lips to Hux’s brow, lifted a hand to caress the side of his head.

“With a sample size of one overeducated Londoner, without also examining other topolects such as Scouse and Geordie,” Hux said. He slipped his hand under the hem of Ben’s t-shirt, hiked it up to bare an expanse of belly and back. 

Ben shook his head. “You’re going to make me come in my jeans if you keep talking sexily and intelligently like this.” He began to undo his belt buckle, then gasped and laughed out loud as Hux rolled over to overbalance him, flip him onto his back. 

“Flatterer. Or are you a fetishist?” Hux asked, as he batted Ben’s hand aside, began to unbuckle his belt himself. 

“A little of both,” Ben grinned crookedly, “but only if it’s you.” His hair fanned out around his face, dark and wavy, a sharp contrast to his blanched-almond complexion and the white pillowcase. 

“That makes you neither, Ben Solo,” Hux laughed. He unzipped Ben’s jeans, tugged them down just a little to better expose that gorgeous cock, rubbed a thumb over the slit of Ben’s meatus, a movement that provoked a sudden moan and shudder. “It only makes you besotted.” 

“And how could I not be, with someone as beautiful as you, Armitage Hux?” Ben asked, seriously and quietly. Hux paused then, tried to untangle the breathtaking mass of feelings in his heart, decided not to bother with an answer. There were so many other things he could do with his mouth at that point in time, and he did.

\---

_Wednesday, September 12th, 2001, 6:45 PM_

“‘Tage?” Ben’s voice was slightly muffled from the pillow, but comprehensible all the same. “You’re awake, aren’t you? I felt your breathing change.” 

“Yes,” Hux said, oddly glad of the fact. He didn’t know why Ben was paying this much attention to his breathing, but it left him feeling strangely giddy, almost excited. He lay with his back pressed up against Ben’s muscular chest, his head resting on Ben’s left arm. 

“I was just thinking about what you told me before,” Ben continued. Hux could feel the words rumble through his chest, the vibrations transmitting to his own spine. It was as though Ben’s words were borne on his heartbeat, one heart tapping to another in a personal Morse code. 

“Before?” Hux rolled over in bed to look him in the face. He had to hold his eyes slightly crossed - Ben’s face was close enough to his to defeat depth perception.

“Before we fucked today,” Ben murmured, before he kissed Hux on the forehead. “You’re really serious about coming to Boston with me.” 

“I was,” Hux said, returning the kiss, “and I still am. I can’t guarantee I’ll stay forever, because I’ll need to take care of my affairs across the pond, but I want to come back, afterwards.” He settled his head on Ben’s shoulder, felt Ben tuck his left arm around his own.

“I could go to London and see you,” Ben suggested, as they got comfortable again. 

“You could come to me, yes,” The thought of wandering the streets of London with Ben in tow, the both of them hand in hand, brought a strange aching thrill to his heart. “Or we could both go somewhere else, provided we find the right jobs.”

“Mm. At least we can order a pizza together.” Ben grinned crookedly and lazily up at Hux, “That’s really all you need, that and love, and I love you even if you’re one of those perverts who likes pineapple on pizza.”

“What is it about pineapple on pizza?” Hux asked him, still puzzled by the comment. 

“You’re not from the Northeast,” Ben laughed softly, “you wouldn’t understand New York pizza.” 

Things started to make sense then. It was a regional thing, and regional things were often given more importance than national matters, especially in trivialities such as food and one’s football side. “Perhaps not,” Hux said thoughtfully, ”but if you come to see me in London then you’re going to have to fathom the mysteries of jellied eel and mushy peas.” 

“You’re worth braving British food for,” Ben said, entirely too solemnly. 

Hux failed to keep a straight face, laughed despite himself. “I’m very glad to hear that.” It wasn’t as though he was excessively fond of jellied eel, in any case. It would not be a privation to go without.

Ben planted a brief kiss on the top of his head. “I’m glad you are,” he said. “Also, one last thing,” he added, a wicked light growing in his dark eyes. 

“What?” Hux asked him, waited several seconds in silence when Ben did not answer. 

Ben rolled over in bed and shifted suddenly from under Hux to take him by surprise, pinned him gently down on the bed by the wrists. “My car is _not_ a death trap,” he growled, and Hux could only laugh and laugh until Ben silenced him with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you wondering why this fic is tagged as an "autopsy of my own experience", I have included things that I said, or were said to me in the aftermath of 9/11, in many of the conversations taking place in this story. I was not an American citizen then, but it shook me hard because of my extensive US friend network. 
> 
> I don't know if those ghosts will stop haunting me now that I've written it, but it is as good an attempt at any.


End file.
